I agree with the other posters that THIS case certainly seems like the defendant was trying to avoid paying for a copyrighted good. However, what I don't understand is that a seed differs from most other copyrighted works in a very special way: it is self replicating. It would be as if I made a useful piece of software that sends out copies of itself to random people (aside from its useful part). Then when I found someone who was using one of the copies it sent out I would sue them. This sounds like how the RIAA would upload songs to torrent sites then sue the people who downloaded them. How is this reasonable? Sure Monsanto has a patent on the genes (something I also disagree with) in the seed but it is putting those genes into a product which spews itself out into the world. Shouldn't a patent/copyright holder hold some responsibility for not disseminating their own product?

Well if you are on Verizon or AT&T in the US it doesn't make ANY sense to buy an unlocked phone. You get zero benefit. You don't pay less. You don't get a better plan. Nothing. Only now with T-Mobile does one get a small discount on the monthly rate. I would be happy to pay full price for an unlocked phone to use anywhere I choose and pay a reasonable price for service via pay as you go. That is not offered in the US. Until it is I am already going to be paying the phone subsidy price regardless of where I got my phone so it makes sense to get a new phone every time I am eligible and sign up for a new two year contract. I am going to be paying for it anyway. All this keeping in mind that T-mobile doesn't offer great service where I live.

No. It wasn't news then for the same reason there are no highly moderated posts on the article now: it isn't news. When this occurred the community (of gamma-ray astronomers) knew it was happening. It was never kept secret.

This idea has no chance of being implemented and, as the submitter points out, fails dramatically outside of a few specific industries. Those industries, insurance and finance, have their own insurance funds (e.g. FDIC). Why not just make the rate you are required to pay the corresponding insurance fund go up as the firm gets larger. i.e. if your firm makes has 1 % market share the nominal rate is 1% of profit but if you 10% market share the nominal rate would be 25% or something like that were the maximum percentage is like 85% and is imposed when a firm reaches some critical fraction of the marketshare.

Glad to see that others are noticing that in Physics we are still willing to entertain questioning of the foundations of modern Physics by those outside the field. Another great thing about our field is that most every paper is openly available on one of the abstract services. The original article noting the apparent paradox can be found here. While the subsequent discussion can be seen by looking at the papers citing the original, found here. Some of the commentaries have yet to be released from their embargo and are thus not yet available but will likely be so soon.

This is not certain, furthermore, I see no reason to condemn Foxconn(any manufacturer) more than Apple(any design company using said manufacturer). Apple could demand better adherence to US standards in the Foxconn plants making their products. Foxconn could just buck the local trend and treat their worker better than their rivals. Why does neither Foxconn nor Apple do this? Money. Foxconn can't do it and survive and Apple wants to maintain their 30% profit margin on their products.

However when you move the plant to the US things change. Foxconn MUST meet much more stringent working standards, not only because the US has more stringent regulations but they will not find workers to work in conditions similar to those in China. Finally, almost certainly what will happen is that the majority of the manufacturing work done in the US will be done by robots and only some small points will humans be used.

One thing that hasn't been addressed in the news thus far is how Foxconn might use the robotics expertise they gain from operating in the US in China. This could have a major effect on the Chinese economy and what that effect will be is far from clear (IMHO).

You quote Average tax rate not the social security tax which is what matters. Please see these data. Which show that, in fact, the highest quintile of earns pay a much smaller percentage than the second to highest. As this quintile makes the most money we are effectively taxing the most money less. More precisely you do not pay SS tax on monies earned over a fixed number.

I think you are mistaken unless you are not speaking about the US which would be odd. The marginal tax rate has been relatively stable and dramatically decreased on the highest earners over the time period you to which you refer (see this article). This is in fact generally true of the average tax rate and most other specific taxes (excluding SS which has remained stable) as can be seen in the data here. So why do you believe that we are being taxed currently at historically high rates?

Mercury not Venus, but yes that was a legitimate announcement.

Please mod parent up and grandparent down. While the Obama related Super PAC did raise a higher percentage of its total funds from large donation, not only was that total less than Romney's (7% for O and 15% for R) but while the AVERAGE was lower for R the top 3 single donators were all on the R side all almost 3 times the largest on the O side. Furthermore, the plots the article the grandparent linked to only tell part of the story: they do not cover the newest, largest arena of political spending PACs unassociated with a candidate (e.g. Carl Rove's Crossroads). These plays are the ones who spent large sums of money and do not need to disclose where the money came from nor even how much they spent. While these types of PACs are supposed to be unassociated with candidates, Propublica has done a number of in depth articles showing that it is just in name only.

Such a simplistic view of how the US system of government operates is what has currently create such a polarize populous. Some business owners maybe be "absolutely certain" they know how things will go under which ever boogie man they decry being elected, but the reality is that the President of the US has only a limited ability to affect large scale change. This is especially true when you have a divided Congress. Giving such people a way to gamble on whomever wins an election will only lead to new forces coming into existence which will have a vested interest in the outcome of US elections, new forces which hold no loyalty to the populous but only to their pocket books. Remember the house always wins, always.

There is a very reasonable solution to many of these problems which does not require any changes to the US constitution: all the states agree to assign their electoral college votes to the winner of the national popular vote. After 2004 many "blue" states signed up. You can find more on their (admittedly horrible looking) site.

Well if it combines cards that is one nice solution I would enjoy. Carrying around a fat wallet is a pain, it causes cloths to wear out faster, and can even cause sciatica. Plus it is just a waste of resources to have 15 plastic cards when I should be able to just have one. Smartphone customer card apps have helped solve this problem but I, for one, would love to reduce the number of credit, debit, and ATM cards I have to carry around.

While I agree with your assessment I think you are missing a major part of why that assessment still fails: Amazon's P/E is ridiculously high. Spending money to make money can make sense but Amazon has repeatedly said that it is making smaller margins and large outlays of capital are not going to increase those margins (in fact likely the opposite). Furthermore, I believe what the parent is getting at is that basing YOUR valuation on a small subset of analysts predictions which have been shown time and time again to be wrong is just crazy. Sure it is "pricing the stock the match the news" but the value of that news needs to be discussed. Analysts do appear to be pulling numbers out of thin air and the market is pricing stocks based on those numbers, it is no wonder that the stock market is overvalued given the short sighted methodology people are using to make their stock price determinations.

Perhaps the issue is that you clearly do not understand how your government works. The fact that your town is 15 miles outside of Sacto doesn't mean that maintaining your roads is a State issue. In fact it is NOT. It is either the responsibility of your town or your county if unincorporated. Similarly the reasons your school budgets are being cut is most likley because of Prop 13 (which limits property tax) than because of poor management (although both could be at fault). I have no idea why you think CA spends anywhere near the most per student on education. According to this Census report, CA does not spend near the top per student. You seem to be woefully confused about how your government works. I would suggest you start fixing the government problems you see around by first informing yourself about how it is supposed to operate and stop blaming your state government for the stupidity of your local government (e.g. for putting up expensive signage).